ARM will skip modems for now, despite being a huge force in mobile

ARM has added a wealth of wireless technologies to its arsenal, but
has no immediate plans to design a modem for mobile or Internet of
Things devices.

The company offers CPU and GPU designs that are widely used in
smartphones and tablets. A missing piece is a cellular modem that ARM
customers could license and put in mobile devices.

ARM once considered developing a modem, but the design is complex and
there are different protocols, technologies and customer requirements,
said Ian Smythe, director of marketing in the CPU group at ARM.

For example, a device maker might want a modem that supports CDMA in
the U.S., while phones in China use a different form of LTE than in the
U.S. and Europe.

"It's quite difficult to come out with a one-size-fits-all, slam-dunk design," Smythe said.

Qualcomm, Intel, MediaTek and Samsung are among the few companies
developing modems today. Apple licenses the ARM CPU architecture, but
buys modems from Qualcomm.

An ARM design could make modems more accessible to chip makers. In
particular, there could be an appetite for modems in IoT devices, where
ARM is growing at a rapid pace, said Jim McGregor, principal analyst at
Tirias Research.

One example for the use of a modem could be in emergency and rescue
situations, where data would need to be transferred to remote locations.
Cellular connectivity will also be needed for remote IoT devices
feeding data in real time to repositories, McGregor said.

ARM has the expertise to build a modem, but the company is fairly
conservative and might not want to make the hefty investment required,
McGregor said. Companies like Freescale and Nvidia have left the modem
business due to the challenges involved.

There are other areas of wireless connectivity where ARM has a huge
presence, such as with its Cordio Bluetooth radio. ARM will continue to
focus on those areas.

ARM will also continue developing adjacent technologies such as CPUs
for modems. The company on Thursday announced the Cortex-R8 CPU design
for modems to support the buildout of 5G networks, which are expected to
be deployed by 2020. Cortex-R8 will go into self-driving cars, robots,
base stations and data-center equipment.

The 5G mobile standard
could provide data-transfer rates that touch 10Gbps. Carriers will
aggregate different types of wireless networks, including unlicensed
spectrum and Wi-Fi, into 5G, which will boost mobile broadband speeds.

The convergence of a melting pot of wireless technologies could
expand the use of 5G beyond just mobile devices. 5G could also be used
for communication in large-scale IOT deployments.

Modems typically establish connections, while technologies like the
Cortex-R8 process and prepare data for transmission, through steps like
error-checking.

The Cortex-R8 will work with real-time operating systems and spur
development of hardware for 5G networks. The first devices with
Cortex-R8 could come out next year.

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